The Blood Spilt

28


Magnus Lindmark was standing by his kitchen window in the dusk. He hadn’t switched on the lights. Every contour, every object both inside and outside had become blurred, begun to dissolve, disappearing into the darkness.
However, he could still see Lars-Gunnar Vinsa, the leader of the hunting team, and Torbj?rn Ylitalo, the chairman of the hunting club, walking up the road toward Magnus’ house. He hid behind the curtain. What the hell did they want? And why weren’t they driving? Had they parked a little way off and walked the last part? Why? He had a really bad feeling about this.
Whatever they wanted, he was bloody well going to tell them he didn’t have time. Unlike those two, he did actually have a job. Well, okay, Torbj?rn Ylitalo was a forester, but he didn’t do any bloody work, nobody could pretend he did.
Magnus Lindmark didn’t often get visitors nowadays, not since Anki and the boys left. He used to think it was a pain in the ass, all her relatives and the boys’ friends coming round. And it wasn’t his style to pretend and smile sweetly. So in the end her sisters and friends used to clear off when he got home. That had suited him down to the ground. He couldn’t do with people sitting around rabbiting for hours. Hadn’t they got anything else to do?
They were on the porch now, knocking on the door. Magnus’ car was in the yard, so he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t home.
Torbj?rn Ylitalo and Lars-Gunnar Vinsa came in without waiting for Magnus to open the door. They were standing in the kitchen.
Torbj?rn Ylitalo switched the light on.
Lars-Gunnar looked around. Suddenly Magnus realized what his kitchen looked like.
“It’s a bit… I’ve had a lot…” he said.
The sink was overflowing with dirty dishes and old milk cartons. Two bags crammed full of empty stinking cans by the door. Clothes he’d just dropped on the floor on his way into the shower, he should have chucked them in the laundry room. The table covered in junk mail, letters, old newspapers and a bowl of yogurt, the yogurt dried up and cracked. On the worktop next to the microwave lay a boat engine in bits; he was going to fix it sometime.
Magnus asked, but neither of them wanted coffee. Nor a beer. Magnus himself opened a Pilsner, his fifth of the evening.
Torbj?rn got straight down to business.
“What have you been saying to the police?” he asked.
“What the f*ck do you mean?”
Torbj?rn Ylitalo’s eyes narrowed. Lars-Gunnar’s stance became somehow heavier.
“Let’s not be stupid, Magnus,” said Torbj?rn. “You told them I wanted to shoot the priest.”
“Crap! That cow of a detective’s full of crap, she…”
He didn’t get any further. Lars-Gunnar had taken a step forward and hit him with a blow that was like having your ears boxed by a grizzly.
“Don’t you stand there lying to us!”
Magnus blinked and raised his hand to his burning cheek.
“What the f*ck,” he whimpered.
“I’ve stuck up for you,” said Lars-Gunnar. “You’re a bloody loser, I’ve always thought so. But for your father’s sake we’ve let you into the team. And we’ve let you stay, despite your bloody antics.”
A hint of defiance flared in Magnus.
“Oh, so you’re a better person than me, are you? You’re superior in some way, are you?”
Now it was Torbj?rn’s turn to give him a thump in the chest. Magnus staggered backwards, cannoning into the worktop with the back of his thighs.
“Right, now you just listen!”
“I’ve put up with you,” Lars-Gunnar went on. “Going out shooting at road signs with your new gun, you and your pals. That bloody fight in the hunting lodge a couple of years ago. You can’t hold your drink. But you carry on boozing and do such stupid bloody things.”
“What the f*ck, the fight, that wasn’t me, that was Jimmy’s cousin, he…”
A new thump in the chest from Torbj?rn. Magnus dropped the can of beer. It lay there, the beer trickling out onto the floor.
Lars-Gunnar wiped the sweat from his brow. It was running past his eyebrows and down his cheeks.
“And those bloody kittens…”
“Yes, for f*ck’s sake,” Torbj?rn chipped in.
Magnus managed a foolish, drunken giggle.
“What the f*ck, a few cats…”
Lars-Gunnar punched him in the face. Clenched fist. Right on the nose. It felt as if his face had split open. Warm blood poured down over his mouth.
“Come on then!” roared Lars-Gunnar. “Here, come on, here!”
He pointed at his own chin.
“Come on! Here! Now you’ve got the chance to fight a real man. You cowardly little bastard, tormenting women. You’re a f*cking disgrace. Come on!”
He beckoned Magnus toward him with both hands. Stuck his chin out to entice him.
Magnus was holding his right hand under his bleeding nose, the blood was running up his shirtsleeve. He waved Lars-Gunnar away with his left hand.
Suddenly Lars-Gunnar leaned heavily on the kitchen table.
“I’m going outside,” he said to Torbj?rn Ylitalo. “Before I do something I might regret.”
Before he went out through the door, he turned around.
“You can report me if you want,” he said. “I don’t care. That’s just what I’d expect from you.”
“But you’re not going to do that,” said Torbj?rn Ylitalo when Lars-Gunnar had gone. “And you’re going to keep your mouth shut about anything to do with me and the hunting team. Have you got that?”
Magnus nodded.
“If I hear you’ve been opening your big mouth again, I personally will make sure you regret it. Understand?”
Magnus nodded again. He was tilting his face upward in an effort to stop the blood pouring out of his nose. It ran back into his throat instead, tasted like iron.
“The hunting permit will be renewed at the end of the year,” Torbj?rn went on. “If there’s a lot of talk or trouble… well, who knows. Nothing’s certain in this world. You’ve got your place in the team, but only if you behave yourself.”
There was silence for a little while.
“Right then, make sure you put some ice on that,” said Torbj?rn eventually.
Then he left as well.
Lars-Gunnar Vinsa was sitting out on the steps, his head in his hands.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Torbj?rn.
“F*ck,” said Lars-Gunnar. “But my father used to hit my mother, you know. So it just makes me furious… I should have killed him, my father, I mean. When I’d finished my police training and moved back here, I tried to get her to divorce him. But back then, in the sixties, you had to talk to the priest first. And the bastard persuaded her to stay with the old man.”
Torbj?rn Ylitalo gazed out across the overgrown meadow bordering on to Magnus’ property.
“Come on,” he said.
Lars-Gunnar got up with some difficulty.
He was thinking about that priest. His bald, shiny pate. His neck, like a pile of sausages. F*ck. His mother, sitting there with her best coat on. Her bag on her knee. Lars-Gunnar sitting beside her to keep her company. The priest, a little smile on his face. As if it were some bloody joke. “Old lady,” the priest had said to her. His mother had just turned fifty. She would live for more than thirty years. “Will you not be reconciled with your husband instead?” Afterward she’d been very quiet. “That’s it, it’s all sorted,” Lars-Gunnar had said. “You’ve spoken to the priest, now you can get a divorce.” But his mother had shaken her head. “It’s easier now you youngsters have left home,” she’d replied. “How would he manage without me?”
* * *

Magnus Lindmark watched the two men disappear down the road. He opened the freezer and rummaged about. Took out a plastic bag of frozen mince, lay down on the living room sofa with a fresh can of beer, placed the frozen mince on his nose and switched on the TV. There was some documentary about dwarves, poor bastards.